The Power of Habit 

Charles Duhigg 
 

Book Overview from the Publisher 

In  ​The  Power  of  Habit,  ​award-winning  business reporter ​Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of 
scientific  discoveries  that  explain  why  habits exist and how they can be changed. Distilling vast amounts 
of  information  into  engrossing  narratives  that  take  us  from  the  boardrooms  of  Procter  &  Gamble  to  the 
sidelines  of  the  NFL  to  the  front  lines  of  the  civil  rights  movement,  Duhigg  presents  a  whole  new 
understanding  of  human  nature and its potential. At its core, ​The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating 
argument:  The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is 
understanding  how  habits  work.  As  Duhigg  shows,  by  harnessing  this  new  science,  we  can  transform 
our businesses, our communities, and our lives. 

KEY POINTS COVERED IN THIS SUMMARY: 

1. The habit loop -​ The basics of the habit loop; why we keep doing 
certain things and how this is affecting us 
2. How to install new habits ​- Simple but effective steps to change 
your negative habits 
3. The most important habit for individual success -​ It’s all in your 
willpower 
4. Awareness training -​ A simple system that can move you from the 
negative to the positive realm of habits 
5. Beliefs -​ How your beliefs and your environment affect your journey 
to success 

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1) The Habit Loop 

 
 
The  habit loop starts with a ​cue or trigger - an initial situation that causes you to do a particular 
routine or behavior. 
 
Once  you  do  that  ​routine  or  behavior​,  it  triggers a ​reward​. You feel or get some sort of reward 
from doing it, and that’s why you keep doing that behavior.  
 
The  reward  causes you to do the routine or behavior every time you have a cue or a trigger, and 
the loop continues on.  
 
The  key  to  understand  here:  You  have  a  ​craving  ​for  that  reward,  which triggers this habit loop 
to  continue  on  forever.  Whether  it's  a  bad  habit  or  a  good  habit,  the  craving  causes  this  habit 
loop to work again and again and again.  
 
EXAMPLE: 
 
Cue or trigger:​ Boredom  
 
Behavior:  When  you  are  working  hard  on  something  and  you feel bored, you check your social 
media  sites  or  your  email  or  your  phone  instead.  You  distract  yourself  with  unnecessary 
information.  
 
Reward:  ​Indulging  in what might be new in the email or what might be exciting on Facebook at 
the moment. Possible Dopamine rush.  
 
The  Craving:  ​That  excitement or novelty that you feel when you check social media, your email, 
or your phone. 
 

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So  it’s  all  really  simple:  You’ve  got  to  understand  what  is  the  cue.  Then  you  see  the  behavior. 
Then  you  see  the  reward.  You  notice  the  craving  that  keeps  you  going  back  to  the  trigger  and 
the behavior. And you will realize that you're doing this again and again. 
 
The stronger and the more addictive the craving,  
the more you're going to indulge in this habit loop again and again. 
 
Related Books: 
●  
 

2) How to install new habits 

If  you  want  to  improve  or  change  a  certain  routine  that  you  have,  follow  these  simple  but 
effective steps. 
 
1. Identify the routine or behavior that you want to improve or change. 
2. Understand why you are doing this behavior.  
a. Ask yourself: What's the reward that's driving me to do it?  
b. Whenever  you  do  that  behavior,  write  down  immediately  the  emotional  reward 
you get from doing it. 
3. Identify the cue.  
a. Ask: What is the cue that is causing me to do this behavior?  
b. Determine the nature of the cue: 
i. Is it location-based? 
ii. Is it time-based?  
iii. Is  it  emotional  state-based?  (i.e.,  when  you  feel  a  certain  way,  you  do 
certain  things.  An  example  is  your  eating  behavior.  When  you  feel  a 
certain emotional state, you probably end up eating bad food.)  
iv. Is it caused by people's presence?  
4. Design a new behavior or routine for yourself. 
a. Identify  the  new thing you would much rather do instead of the old behavior that 
you had.  
b. Start  doing  it  whenever  you  have  that  same  cue  (boredom).  Do  this  new 
behavior instead to lead to the reward.  
 
Installing new habits is as simple as that. 
 
Related Books: 
●  
 

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3) The most important habit for individual success  
The most important habit for individual success: W ​ illpower  
 
● Willpower is a very learnable skill.  
● If  you  only  improve  your  willpower  in  1  area of your life, it will affect every other area of 
your life.  
○ Example:  If  you  improve  your  willpower  in  health,  it  will  also  help  improve  your 
finances,  your  business,  your  family,  your  relationships,  and  so  on.  And  that's 
why willpower is so important for individual success.  
 
How  do  we  improve  our  willpower?  How  do  we  go  about  increasing  the  willpower  that  we 
have? 
 
A  study  done  in  1992  in  Scottish  hospitals  sheds  light  on  willpower.  The  study  involved 
conducting knee replacement surgery among patients.  
 
Knee  replacement  surgery  is  a very painful procedure to recover from. Usually the patients who 
are  going  through the surgery are much older, mostly in their 60s. The recovery process for that 
age is excruciatingly painful.  
 
What  the  scientists  wanted  to  figure  out  was  how  they  could  help  improve  the  patients’ 
willpower  so  that  they  would  be  able  to  recover  fast.  How  could  the  patients  go  through  their 
recovery process despite the pain?  
 
In  order  to  improve  the  willpower  of  those  patients,  they  gave  them  simple  journals.  The 
scientists  told  these  patients  to  write  down  their  goals  in  those  journals.  They  were  asked  to 
write down w ​ hat, when, where, and how​ they would do certain things.  
 
What the scientists found was very fascinating:  
● One  group  of  patients  had  twice as fast recovery time as another group of patients. The 
patients in that first group were writing down their goals as they had been told.  
● As  it  turns  out,  the  other  group  that  did  not  recover  as  fast  did  not  write  anything  in 
their journals. 
● Just  the  act  of  writing  down  goals  helped  patients  recover  fast. ​They were able to do 
the exercises even though it was painful. 
● Even  more  fascinating  --  the  group  that  had  the  fastest  recovery  were  the  ones  who 
wrote  down  exactly  ​1)  what  their  inflection  points  were  and  ​2)  how  they were going 
to overcome them. 

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Knowing your inflection points makes a difference 
 
Inflection points are the points where you have a big obstacle in your way.  
 
In  the  case  of  the  patients, their rehab was a painful situation where it hurts a lot to do it and to 
go through it.  
 
What is that point where you're most likely to give up? 
 
Identifying  that  point  is  key  to improving your willpower. This is because once you know where 
you're  likely  to  give  up,  you  can  now  design  a  behavior  to  address  the  challenge.  You  start 
identifying actions that you will take. 
 
Once  you  know  what exactly you will do in the face of the obstacle, you are much more likely to 
do  it.  Now  you  know  that just the act of writing the inflection point and writing your action plan 
will allow you to improve your willpower dramatically. 
  
Apply this in every area of your life where you are struggling with willpower.  
● Identify your inflection point 
● Write down what exactly you will do 
 
As you do this, you are allowing your willpower to improve dramatically. 
 
Related Books: 
● Rethinking Positive Thinking - Gabriel Oettingen  
○ Listen  to  my  podcast  interview  on  Rethinking  Positive  Thinking  on 
2000books.com  

4) Awareness Training 
Awareness training will help you switch your negative habits to positive habits in any domain.  
 
How awareness training works: 
● Identify the negative habit that you want to change. 
● Identify the cue or the trigger that causes the negative habit to happen.  
● Once  you  identify  what  triggers  this  negative  habit,  start  carrying  around  with  you  an 
index  card.  Every  time  you  are  triggered  by  the  cue  and  you  want  to  indulge  in  that 
negative habit, put a check mark on that index card.  
● What  you've  done  in  effect  is  you've  trained  yourself  to  become  ​aware ​of this negative 
behavior every time it's coming along. This awareness is a crucial thing in the process.  
 

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Once  you have trained yourself to become aware of this behavior, you can now replace it with a 
positive behavior.  
● Again, carry around an index card.  
● Now  you're  going  to  do  something  more  profound.  Every  time  you  do  the  positive 
behavior  instead  of  the  negative  behavior, you're going to put a hashtag or some sort of 
a mark to indicate that you actually made progress. 
 
So every time you become aware of the cue, you're going to put a ​✓​.  
Every time you do a positive behavior instead of the negative one, you're going to put a ​#.​   
 
That's  how  you're  going  to  train  yourself.  Every  time  you  do  a  positive  behavior,  you  reward 
yourself  with  the  sign.  And  that's  going  to  cause  you  to  now  retrain  yourself  to  go  from 
negative to positive behavior.  
 
EXAMPLE: 
 
Every time you feel bored, you feel frustrated:  
● You pick up your phone and you check your social media.  
● You waste all your time 
 
The  way  to  manage  this  problem  is  to  first  ​identify  the  positive  routine  you're  going  to  build 
instead of this current negative routine of checking your phone and your social media sites.  
 
Let’s say the positive routine you want in place of the negative is this:   
“Every time I feel bored, I want to instead read 2 pages of a good book.” 
 
Now let’s install that positive routine: 
● Carry around an index card.  
● Every  time  you  start  feeling  boredom  coming  along  and  you're  just  about to check your 
phone  for  Facebook,  Twitter,  and  all  that stuff, put a ✓​  on the card. This means you are 
aware of the cue. 
● To  start  moving  into  the  positive  domain,  every  time  you  feel bored, read a book as you 
have  told  yourself,  instead  of  going  to  your  social media sites. Reward yourself with a ​# 
on the index card.  
● Now you’re building the positive ritual you identified for yourself.  
 
This  is  a  really  simple  awareness  training  that  will  help  you move from the negative habits into 
the realm of positive habits. 
 
Related Books: 
●  

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5) Beliefs 
To change your negative habits to positive habits:  
● Believe ​that it is possible.  
● Believe that you can improve.  
● Believe that it will happen. 
 
How do we improve these beliefs? How do we build up these beliefs in anyone?  
 
The simplest answer:  
Surround yourself with like-minded people.  
● People who are on the same journey. 
● People who are also improving themselves.  
● People who are able to improve themselves in the area of your choice.  
 
So  find  a community of like-minded people who are trying to change, see them transform and it 
will also allow you to transform. 
  
Effects of surrounding yourself with like-minded people: 
● You transfer their beliefs over to you. 
● You start to believe that change is possible.  
● It  will  allow  you  to  believe  that  you  can  do  it,  that  you  have the capability, the strength, 
and the courage to do what you want 
 
Related Books: 
● Willpower Doesn’t Work - Ben Hardy  
 
 

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